At a campaign rally in Arizona Sunday, Donald Trump denied reports that he is showing signs of cognitive decline, attacking critics for singling out his mispronunciations.
“They watch for weeks and weeks. For weeks and weeks, I’m up here ranting and raving. Last night, a hundred thousand people. Flawless. Ranting and raving. I’m ranting and raving. Not a mistake. And then, I’ll be at a little thing and I’ll say something a little bit like ‘The.’ I’ll say ‘duh.’ They’ll say he’s cognitively impaired,” Trump said.
“No, I’ll let you know when I will be. I will be someday, we all will be someday, but I’ll be the first to let you know,” Trump added.
Trump: For weeks and weeks, I’m up here ranting and raving. Last night, a hundred thousand people. Flawless. Ranting and raving. I’m ranting and raving. I’ll say the, I’ll say duh. They’ll say he’s cognitively impaired. pic.twitter.com/9Gy0BpLuqH
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 13, 2024
Trump has in fact continued to sound more erratic and bizarre as the presidential race enters its final weeks. At a Wisconsin rally just over a week ago, he compared himself to a fly, struggled to pronounce words like “Midwestern” and “evangelicals,” and spread misinformation about Hurricane Helene. In a New York rally in September, he stumbled over words like “migrants” and “Russia” and had trouble stringing sentences together.
His cognitive decline was evident to everyone watching the first (and almost certainly last) presidential debate with Kamala Harris, where Trump went on long-winded rants unrelated to the questions asked.
Trump’s speech patterns and alertness look very different from eight years ago, and psychology researchers see compelling evidence that Trump is significantly less sharp than he was at the start of his presidency, with increasingly incoherent speech. The media is finally starting to give the issue attention, which probably prompted the media-obsessed former president to bring up his cognitive decline at his rally. But will all of this evidence convince voters that Trump should not return to the White House? Right now, polls are showing the race between Trump and Harris to be nearly deadlocked.
